CHRISTIANITY AND NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 405, 28 March 1947, Page 12

CHRISTIANITY AND NEW ZEALAND

Sir-‘"If Christianity is going to be chucked overboard-and the fact is that New Zealand seems in effect to be abandoning it-we must ask whether there is anything to put in its place." That is part of the Rev. H. W. Newell's messag@ published in your issue of Febtuary 14, I would say that you can’t chuck overboard what you have never had on board. There is not a so-called civilised country in the world that has ever put into practice Christianity as ropounded by its Founder. It is a ealthy sign if mankind has decided to seek for something more effective than what has so far passed for Christianity. From the time that the early Christians slaughtered each other on the altar steps in quarrels over doctrinal matters, the Christian Church has been a congeries of rival factions each claiming to be the possessor of the real ‘truth. It is true that persecution, tor‘ture, butning at the stake, have gone as penalties for failing to agree with the politically dominant religious body of the moment. We have a variety of denominations which constitute useful social bodies having largely commercialised creeds, costly and ornate places

of worship and rituals, and comprehensive balance-sheets and budgets as the machinery of those who claim to represent the Man "who had not where to lay His head." Not many theologians seem prepared to fece the facts with the same courage as Reinhold Niebuhr, who in his Ethics of Christianity says: "The ethical demands made by Jesus are incapable of fulfilment in the present existence of man." Organised Christianity has for centuries proceeded upon the false assumption that the demands of Jesus can be fulfilled by ordinary mortals in this ordinary world, so that it is not surprising if the Church has failed to achieve the impossible. Balfour says: "We desire, and we desire most passionately when we are most ourselves, to give our service to that which is universal and that which is abiding." Organised Christianity does not provide us with that. Professor H. Carr says: "Those who believe that a return to Christianity is the clue to our problems, must face the task of recreating Christianity before they can use it as a foundation on which to rebuild the world." A world, I would add, that contains two for every Christian,

Mr. Newell doesn’t think New Zealand has anything much worth while to say "in the world’s state of spiritual bankruptcy, unless we do find a faith of some sort." In my view, the social legislation of New Zealand has-to use an Americanism-‘said a mouthful" to the world by declaring the practicability of a community applying some of the fundamental commands of Jesus to daily, life; not an "abandonment" of Christianity but a fait start at recreating it,

J. MALTON

MURRAY

(Oamaru).